GIBRALTAR: 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE ROCK

Britain has 300 years of sovereignty over the Rock and almost all of its inhabitants want to remain with Britain. And why would Britain abandon it? It has monkeys. It has rock'n'roll history. It has rock'n'roll history that collides with monkeys. Here are some of the things you might not know about Gibraltar.

1. Gibraltar, like many a British town centre, has a Marks & Spencer and a Bhs. There are branches of Next, Mothercare and Wallis. The Morrisons branch is said to be one of the busiest and most successful of all the supermarket's stores, and attracts daytripping expats from nearby Spain. Living the dream indeed.

2. When asked, at the referendum in 2002, whether Spain and the UK should share sovereignty of Gibraltar, more than 98% of Gibraltarians said it should remain British.

3. Gibraltar may have been the place where the Neanderthals died out. A study published in Nature in 2006 suggested they were living in a cave site on the south-east of Gibraltar up to 24,000 years ago (later than the 30,000 years previously thought). However, new carbon dating may be about to force archaeologists to rethink that.

4. There are thought to be about 230 Barbary macaques on the rock, the only wild population of the monkeys in Europe. Last year, more than 50 people were treated in hospital following attacks. In a bizarre incident involving one of their most high-profile victims, the American Pie actor Jason Biggs and his wife were attacked while on holiday. The monkeys set on the pair, after she apparently teased one with a tampon from her handbag. "The one monkey opened the tampon, put the tampon in his mouth like he was smoking a cigar," recalled Biggs last year. It is unclear whether this is the same incident, differently told, of another report that Biggs was attacked in 2009. If he was, we can glean two facts: he really must love Gibraltar if he wanted to revisit it, and Gibraltar's monkeys must really have a thing against him. I understand, I've seen American Reunion.

5. Brian Jones also had a run-in with the monkeys. In 1967, the Rolling Stones' guitarist, accompanied by Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull – all on LSD – visited the colony in Gibraltar en route to meet the rest of the band in Morocco. According to Faithfull's autobiography, Jones decided he wanted to play a tape of music he had made for a film starring Pallenberg to the monkeys. "We approached the troop of monkeys very ceremoniously," she writes, "and told them we were going to play them some wonderful sounds. They listened to all this very attentively, but when Brian turned on the tape recorder, they didn't seem to care for it. They seemed alarmed by it and scampered away shrieking. Brian got very upset. He took it personally. He became hysterical and started sobbing."

6. It isn't exactly a paradise of open space. Most of the 30,000 population of this 2.6 square mile peninsula live in flats, crammed on land at the base of the rock. Property prices are high – fuelled by the strong economy, and attractiveness to tax exiles – and many young Gibraltarians are being forced to move to Spain and commute to Gibraltar, a journey that can take hours if there are delays at the crossing.

7. It's often described as being a bit like Britain in a time warp, and not all of it cosy and nostalgic. The age of consent for gay men was only equalised in 2011, civil partnerships are not recognised, let alone equal marriage, and gay couples have only been allowed to adopt since April this year following a supreme court ruling.

8. In March 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono flew to Gibraltar, where they were married in a 10-minute ceremony at the British consulate by registrar Cecil Wheeler. It was the only place that could marry them at such short notice. Within an hour they headed for Amsterdam, and the Hilton hotel, where they spent their honeymoon in bed, accompanied by the world's press, to call for world peace. Gibraltar, which commemorated 30 years since the marriage with a special edition of stamps in 1999, doesn't appear to have taken it as a snub.